Hands-on with Sony’s $500, 24-inch 3D HDTV with screen sharing

Sony's $500, 24-inch 3D television offers some very cool features, but it …

At Sony's press conference, the company announced a $500 3DTV that comes with PlayStation styling, and will allow two players to play at the same time, with each seeing his or her own image. We had a chance to demo the screen in an odd little room designed to look like a dorm room, and the technology is interesting. Still, this is a very strange product in terms of both price and features.

The package comes with the 24-inch television, a copy of Resistance 3, an HDMI cable, and one set of the $69.99 glasses. To get the full benefit of the screen you'll need to pay for another pair of glasses to play with a friend.

When not wearing the glasses, the screen-sharing featuring simply looks like the screen is playing two games at once, with heavy ghosting. I tried to take a video with my camera, and it came out even weirder. The magic happens when you both put on the glasses and hit the button that switches between the two images. With the glasses on, I saw only one image, and the other person in the room saw the other. So we could play a game against each other on the same screen without having the share the screen real estate. It's a neat trick.

Sony's $500 3DTV

The television does 1080p at 240Hz, but the refresh rate is halved for each viewer when the screen-sharing feature is turned on, so you won't get the full use of that power. It also has full support for 3D gaming when playing by yourself, and it provides a great image with standard video as well. It's also likely the screen-sharing feature needs to be supported in software, meaning not all games will work.

$500 is a lot of money for a college kid or those with small apartments, and in this day and age, 24" is small for those serious about their displays. The ability to play with others on the same screen is intriguing, but I'm not sure if it's enough to get people to pay a premium. 3D televisions are dropping in price, and the quality of the displays is maturing. This is a very neat piece of technology that's locked into a specific size and a specific price point, and it's not clear whether Sony aimed at the right demographic or sees this as something of an experimental product.